Another name goes into American lexicon- Sandy Hook

I'm not writing this post to expose facts (of which I have few) or to expose opinions (because mine lead to no answers).  I just want you all to think.  And I've said my prayers in private, so I won't be going into the tragedy per se.

Quite a bit was put on FB yesterday about people "taking advantage of a tragedy to politize" by bringing up, yet again, gun control.  My friend Mynx- an Aussie- put up an excellent post on the subject.  I do want to share with those of you who don't hit links my reply:

There’s definately two sides to the story. I see no reason why anyone outside a soldier needs automatic or semi-auto assault style weapons. On the other hand, I remember reading in the last year or so that assaults on schoolchildren were being more and more common in western China- but all of those were with knives, axes, machetes, etc. Like everything else in America, there doesn’t seem to be any ground between “all guns should be legal” and “all guns should be illegal.” It boils down to a fallen humanity in which people are sometimes led to do horrible things, and all the weapon bans you think up won’t stop it.
A commenter on FoxNews turned it into an indictment of our mental health system. But that is just as flimsy as making it a gun control issue. You can’t lock up everyone who might be a nut, and you can’t take away every weapon. There comes a point where you just have to do the things necessary to make yourself safe. The dude came in through a door that you SHOULD have to be buzzed through, with 2-4 assault weapons. The security system was only as good as the person operating it. Did he get in without being looked at? Was the door unlocked? We don’t know, but somewhere along the line, a system that SHOULD have been good enough to prevent this failed. And that is the why of it, not gun control or mental health.
And the what of it you covered at the very beginning. The thought that someone would do that to little kids sent me to work with tears in my eyes.

And moments later I came across this story, which I then confirmed on China's Xinhua:

22 students stabbed in central China attack

English.news.cn 2012-12-14 20:46:01

ZHENGZHOU, Dec. 14 (Xinhua) -- Twenty-two school children and a villager were injured in a knife attack at the gate of a primary school in central China's Henan Province on Friday morning, according to local authorities.
All the injured people have been sent to three local hospitals and at least two of them, one student and an 85-year-old woman, are in serious conditions, said police.
The attack happened at around 7:40 a.m. at the entrance of Chenpeng Village Primary School in Wenshu Township of Guangshan County in the city of Xinyang, a police officer said on condition of anonymity.
Local police said they had seized a suspect, a 36-year-old villager named Min Yingjun.
At around 7 a.m. on Friday, Min burst into the 85-year-old woman's house, which neighbors the school, and an argument ensued, according to the woman's daughter.
Liu is thought to have seized a knife at the house and attacked the elderly woman. He then left, rushed into the school campus and slashed students, according to villagers.
The suspect was unknown in the village and might be mentally ill, some villagers said.
The elderly woman and most of the injured students suffered head wounds. And some of them were in shock, according to the People's Hospital of the county, which received most of the people injured in the attack.
"I want to go home!" cried a 7-year-old pupil surnamed Wei, who arrived at the hospital in a serious condition with a skull fracture.
The boy's coat was stained with blood and he was quite scared after being wounded, according to the boy's relatives.
The case is under investigation.

Notice that it happened the SAME DAY.  Gun control would NOT have prevented this.  The Hartford Courant, where I found the story looking into Sandy Hook, added this:

There have been a series of attacks on schools and schoolchildren around China in recent years, some by people who have lost their jobs or felt left out of the country's economic boom.

The rash of violence has prompted public calls for more measures to protect the young in a country where many couples only have one child.

In 2010, a man slashed 28 children, two teachers and a security guard in a kindergarten in eastern China.

And I remember that that story was at a time where it was a part of a list of at least three similar attacks.  Why does this kind of thing happen?

Perhaps our scientific friends who espouse evolution rather than creation could best answer that.  I'm surprised they haven't said what I'm about to.

Down through history, overpopulation has been a problem on local levels.  Even in nature, there are examples of it, and nature's responses- including the only slightly true story of lemmings charging off a cliff.  In the early days of history, wars and disease were easily able to solve the problem.

But man became smarter, ate and lived healthier.  Wars and disease had to become more than local to meet the problem- see the Black Plague.  But then, man figured how to combat disease, and the burden shifted to war.  The Thirty Years War, the Wars of Napoleon, and finally World Wars I and II increasingly upped the stakes, bringing civilian populations increasingly into their scope, even adding mass genocides in the last two.

But now, war has changed.  Very rarely do two significant armies meet in the field.  It's now just terrorism and guerrila actions.  And nature needs a new killer.

The climate changes, and monsters like Katrina and Sandy strike.  HIV and flesh eating viruses elude defeat by wonder drugs.  Drugs assault society, both in the actions of foreign and domestic drug lords and in local joes robbing stores for oxycodone and meth ingredients.

And nutjob killers spring up, killing random people in shopping malls and kindergartens.

Now, I'm not saying that nature is responsible for mass-killers.  But, given the "logic" of evolution, I'm surprised that no one else has.

Of course, when you figure that the people who most fervently support evolution also support policies that include the banning of guns, maybe it's not so surprising.